


The End of Before

by ColdGold



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Coma, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5552900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdGold/pseuds/ColdGold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Waking up took days. In movies it seemed simple. One day the character opens their eyes and everything would be back to normal. At first all she could do was squeeze his hand as he talked. The words were muddied and hard to decipher, but she knew it was his voice and his hand in hers"</p><p>Two months after the shooting Felicity wakes up to face the fall-out from the shooting. Together Oliver and Felicity try to deal with the enormity of what they've experienced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of Before

**Author's Note:**

> I considered this idea after watching the trailer for the next episode, and then I saw someone on tumblr discuss this which was when I decided to write it. It's emotional, angsty, and if that's not your thing this... isn't your thing either. It's rated T for these reasons.

Waking up took days. In movies it seemed simple. One day the character opens their eyes and everything would be back to normal. At first all she could do was squeeze his hand as he talked. The words were muddied and hard to decipher, but she knew it was his voice and his hand in hers. When his excitement reached her ears she could just twitch her lips into what she hoped was a smile, until the current pulled her under. It took three more times of waking up, of having her eyelids pried open and shone on with a pocket light, before she could will her eyes to open on their own. 

He was there, as was her mother, immediately jumping up from their chairs and stalling their conversation. They were discussing the proper way to make steak. It was such a trivial conversation that she knew that she hadn’t just been unconscious for a couple of hours. There was no voice in her throat, it was too dry and it felt like there was something there she couldn’t quite swallow down. Her mother helped her take a few sips of water all the while talking about how happy she was that Felicity had finally opened her eyes. 

In a matter of seconds the doctors flurried in, nurses in tow. There were more lights in her eyes, and she had to follow a finger, recite her name and city. She wanted to ask the date, didn’t dare to. How much time had she missed? Was December 10th a faraway memory by now? It exhausted her. Squeezing fingers and wiggling her toes. The doctors had barely left when she fell asleep again. 

It lasted for days, but each time she willed herself to stay awake just a few seconds longer. Four days after she fluttered her eyes open for the first time she woke up and it was only Oliver in the room. 

”Hey,” he said. His voice was a low raspy whisper, filled with a new heaviness that she didn’t recognize. There was more behind his eyes, memories that danced a wicked dance as his thumb ghosted over her wrist. ”How are you?”

”Tired,” Felicity said, flashing her teeth at him smiling. ”All I’ve done is sleep, you’d think by now I’d be able to stay awake for the next 6 months, but nooo…” She twisted her hand up to interwine her fingers in his. ”How are you?”

”I’m good now.” He brought her hand to his face, kissing her knuckles. 

”I’m guessing I have a new scar that I get to brag about.” She nudged his chin playfully, but the flash of something she couldn’t place across his face made her pause.

”Felicity…” His tone said everything, but it didn’t say enough.

”What happened?” Now that she was awake she couldn’t take the not knowing. She had heard snippets. She knew he had gone after Darhk, and she knew that while he hadn’t taken Darhk down he had set his plans back significantly enough to buy everyone in Star City a chance at winning against him. She knew there had been complications in her recovery, complications that no one wanted to elaborate on. 

”You were hit with three bullets Felicity, luckily two didn’t hit any organs but one did.” He sat up straighter, leaning over her and pointed a finger the top of her breast bone. ”You have a scar that runs from here to…” he pointed to a spot in the hollow between her ribs, ”here from when they had to crack your chest.” When he said it she could feel the pull of a scar, an uncomfortable dull aching of nerves that were trying to re-connect. 

”I was shot in the chest…” She remembered the burning, the feeling of her chest bursting into flames before the darkness pulled her under. 

”It missed your heart, but punctured your left lung and esophagus. You’ve been in and out of surgery for that several times.” He fell back in the chair again, almost collapsing on top of himself. ”The doctor will be able to explain it better, I don’t know what it means, what will happen… but they say you’re going to be okay.”

”That’s not everything Oliver,” she said, her tone warning. ”The doctor will tell me, but I want to hear it from you.” 

The pause was long. The force of his heavy breaths set her teeth on edge. From her horizontal position she could still see the debate raging in his head, the weighting of words for long minutes. Then he opened his mouth.

”After you went into surgery I went out to find Darhk, so I wasn’t here when you were brought out from surgery. Your mom was here, and she figured out who I am…” He rested his face against the palm of his hand, the elbow of the arm digging into the mattress next to her hand. ”I didn’t know Felicity, did you know?” His eyes were pleading, begging to be relieved of the pressure of uttering the next words.

”Know what?” Panic flooded into his chest at the look of despair that crossed his features, and he reached for her hand, holding it tightly in both of his.

”There were complications, I thought at first that it meant that you… that you were going to die.” He released a shuddering breath before he continued. ”You were pregnant Felicity.” It was the first time he had said it out loud, and he seemed perplexed at the idea that she had been carrying his child once. That they had an almost something which would now never be.

”Were?” Without thinking her hand that wasn’t clasped in his rested on her flat stomach. A feeling of emptiness filled her, even though she never knew before she lost it. 

”You were 7 weeks.” His voice was hollow in another galaxy away from hers. She was floating on the mattress away from the Milky Way towards the pull of a suffocating black hole. The whooshing of her heartbeat in her ears nearly drowned out his voice. Up there she could see herself far away lying on the bed immobile. She could see the paleness of her frozen face as Oliver’s thumb caressed the hollow between her thumb and index finger. 

”I should’ve known.” The sound of her own voice pulled her back into her body. Seven weeks was enough for her to have realized, to have found out and started dreaming about a possible future. To freak out, be sad, happy, worried, and perfectly content. Tears pricked at the edges of her vision, blurring her vision. ”It’s my fault.” His hand squeezed hers tighter.

”It isn’t your fault Felicity, you did nothing wrong.” He held her hand to his lips once more, one of his hands slipped away to grasp at her other on her stomach, making her look at him. ”You did nothing wrong.”

”I was a mom for five weeks Oliver, and I didn’t even know… I didn’t know, I didn’t get to know.” She held his hand tight over her stomach, pressing his hand against the flat expanse of it. 

The loss of what they didn’t know they had colored the silence between them. He was a steady comforting presence in her recovery. Always there to hold her hand, to offer his body as a pillow when the monotony of the days got to her. She had never been this near death before, had never felt the reaper touch her skin and wager over he life. Words were insufficient to describe it, so she clamored to him, the one who knew better than anyone the lingering sent of the reaper on her skin. 

Somehow he knew how to make it all feel better by simply being there. He was a buffer between Felicity and her torn mother that overwhelmed Felicity with her tears. He let her work on her tablet, but he also knew when to put it away so that she would rest herself. 

The first time she was strong enough to take a shower by herself she undressed with her back to the mirror. Though she could see the scars on her body as she stood naked in the shower. They weren’t battle scars. They were scars of a battle she never fought, scars of a war that left her body and pulled her away from this life for months. It was February, and the crisp winds had started to mellow already. Oliver’s scars had brought out a sort of reverence in her that she hadn’t been able to understand until now. These scars were reminders, they weren’t strength in themselves. Scars were just painful. 

After a while she got to go home. There were no high-heels or short dresses. It was just the loosely tied chucks, Oliver’s too big sweatpants and a zipped hoodie that she didn’t have to pull over her head. The scars still pulled when she raised her arms, and made her feel completely helpless. But as she entered their loft, their home, all of that seemed to melt away from her bones. Her scars didn’t weigh anymore, and Olivers fingers on her elbow pulled a smile on her face.

”I want to watch a movie,” she said as she looked up at him. ”Something funny, and romantic… a chick-flick please.” His lips brushed against hers. She could feel the smile grow, but he didn’t pull his lips from hers. 

”Your wish is my command, fiancée.” As he picked up her bags and ran upstairs with them her thumb found the ring on her finger. He had slipped it back on her the day before, and though she had only spent 30 minutes with it on before the shooting it felt familiar and as much as coming home as entering the loft had. 

She walked to the couch, sitting down gingerly to prevent the scars on her torso from pulling. Though they were healing it was a gradual process. 

The movie was lighthearted and a welcome distraction from the harsh reality where Felicity had almost lost her battle when they had finally started to make progress. She rested between his legs with her head on his chest. He braided her hair as they watched, just like she had taught him at the hospital. Pony-tails and messy-buns worked, but braids won the contest of the most comfortable bed-rest hairstyle by a wide margin. It kept him busy, and focused, and kept him close to her. It was soothing to have her hair brushed and worked by his nimble and gentle hands, and her eyes drooped lower while he worked on her hair. 

”If it had been a girl I think I would’ve been the one of us to do her hair in the mornings,” he said eventually, smoothing the braid against her scalp, and then following the line of her jaw with his fingertips. The lightness of his tone surprised her, so she looked up at him to catch his expression. There was no sadness in his expression, if only a ruefulness of what could have been. 

”Did… do you want that?” she asked, her hand searching for his, finding it and grasping it in hers. 

”Yeah, I think I do… eventually.” He squeezed her hand. ”But not when Darhk is still out there.” He waited in her silence for her response, but there was none. He couldn’t see her face where she rested it against his chest, but could hear her breathing. ”What are you thinking?” His fingers wandered over cheek, down her neck, and up over her cheek again where he could feel her muscles tense as she smiled. 

”One day, in the future, I think you’ll be a wonderful dad.” This time she squeezed his hand. ”And I want to be a part of that.” She twisted herself in his arms, ignoring the burning in her scars so that she would be able to see his face. ”Not now, not soon, but sometime.” Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. ”We weren’t ready now, and that helps a little.”

”It still sucks.”

”It does, but you will make him pay for it.” The silence was determinate this time. ”I know you will.”


End file.
